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Back in March, I wrote about how Betty Please and I were making a plan and working to accomplish a few goals so we could start trying to build a family in the near future. Probably in the fall. I'm not sure where the time went, but the near future, is here. Holy cow! This month, like a few weeks from now, we start trying to conceive. If we can decide on a donor, that is.
After going back and forth over whether to use a known donor or anonymous donor, we decided that it seemed less complicated, in the long run, to use an anonymous donor. From there, we decided on a bank and started looking at profiles. I've gotta tell you, deciding on a donor is such a strange thing. And for people like Betty Please and I who over think every decision, big or small, to the degree that I hardly think decisive is a word anyone would use to describe either one of us, it's nearly impossible. It's so surreal to think about making this sort of decision. I mean, we're picking half of our child's DNA based on a profile. It's just weird. It's like ordering off of a Thai menu, "Mmm, yeah, the 27 sounds good, I'll try that."
Reading profiles only gives you a vague idea of a person. German, Dutch, Irish, Polish, 6' tall, 185 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, chemist, IQ 140, interested in music, hockey, architecture...blah, blah, blah. That could be anything. I'm sure Dexter Morgan would seem like an excellent donor, on paper. Even reading extended bios doesn't make the choice much easier. Not really knowing the person, how do really know you're making the best choice. It isn't really too different from visualizing and building up the idea of a character in a book. And then what happens when the movie comes out and the character is nothing like you imagined?
Now, I know genetics isn't everything. Our kids will be unique, wonderful and beautiful people who have their own personalities, interests, talents and beliefs, who we will love to death, regardless of which donor we choose. If we went, or some day end up going, the route of adoption, obviously genetics wouldn't/won't even be a factor. But, when you have to choose a donor, genetics is a factor. Maybe it's just too much of my nerdiness creeping into my brain, that I think about genetic fitness, and how on a subconscious level we choose our mates bases on genetic fitness of our future children. Perhaps I just think too much. Or maybe, I'm just trying to justify why I ruled out all donors who weren't at least 6' tall. Seems ridiculous and arbitrary, doesn't it. I'm sure I ruled out lots of great potential donors, but I want my kids to at least have a chance at being tall, or taller than average. Why? I don't know, I just like tall and athletic. What can I say.
At this point, we are feeling a bit like genetic engineers. It seems so GATTACA. As an experiment, I had us each look at the donor profiles separately, and list the all the donors we'd want to know more about. I think we were both trying to match BP as best possible, and have the donor be over 6' tall, so I wasn't really surprised that of my list of 11 and her list of 13, 8 were matching. Now we just have to get together and rank the 8, and we're set. I would certainly hope we could that accomplished within the next week or so.
I'm down to one last dreaded step in my preparedness, giving up caffeine. I know there are mixed feelings on caffeine, but as much coffee as I drink, I really can't imagine that would be good for a baby. Like any good addict, I can't stop at one cup. So my plan is to cut it out entirely. I've already stopped playing hockey, which really sucks right now, especially knowing that it could take a while to get pregnant. But I just can't see taking the risk.
So are we just crazy, or do other people have this kind of
